If he truly was alive, if he had done this, then he must have been following me for some time. My mind searched through the past few weeks and months, trying to remember if I’d felt like I was being followed. But that was just it—one always felt followed in this city. Always felt eyes, always heard footsteps.
A flock of ravens alighted from the central courtyard, and my head whirled around. Was he following me even now? So many places to hide: behind those skeletal trees, on the rooftop of a nearby building . . .
I hugged my knees tight, not daring to close my eyes. If he knew about Annie stealing my mother’s ring, what else did he know about? Did he know about my secret workshop and my growing illness? Did he know how I was stealing from the professor? Did he know that I’d opened the laboratory door so Jaguar could kill my father?
It terrified me that Edward might know all of my secrets. If he chose to, he could expose me. Hurt me for how I’d hurt him when I’d rejected his love. People loved a good gruesome rumor. If he revealed that the vilified Dr. Moreau’s daughter had murdered her own father, this city would devour me alive.
I ran numb fingers over my face, thinking. Edward was tied up in all those secrets too, though. Exposing my secrets would expose his own—his unnatural origin and his inclination to kill. No, the more I thought about it, the more I was certain it wasn’t my secrets he was after.
Maybe it was my life.
A tingling started deep in my spine. For all I knew, I could be Edward’s next target. He could merely be toying with me, killing those who had wronged me to create a false sense of safety before he struck. After all, I’d rejected his love and then left him for dead. I could hardly expect him to do anything logically. How much control did Edward really have over himself? Where was the line between Beast and man?
Yet if Edward had wanted to kill me, there were far more effective ways. I’d given him a thousand opportunities to strike as I slunk along Shoreditch at night on my way to my secret workshop. And I might have left him for dead, but I’d prevented Montgomery from slitting his throat. I had given him a chance.
So what were these bodies supposed to tell me? If he meant me no harm, why hide behind such macabre gestures of affection?
It’s different with you, Juliet, Edward had said. We belong together.
He’d been wounded before he’d been able to explain what he meant by that plea for help. As I leaned against the brick wall, body ravaged by too many warring emotions, I wondered if Edward Prince had come back to London with that in mind. Not to destroy my life with rumors, not to claw out my heart, but to confess his love once more.
A hundred uncertainties twisted at my heart. The question was, Who else had to die first? Who else had wronged me? I could give him a list, I thought blackly, starting with Dr. Hastings. But I immediately regretted such thoughts. The truth was, he had to be learning about all these people from somewhere. No one knew about Annie stealing that ring except for Lucy. Perhaps she told someone; perhaps she wrote it in a journal that he’d found.
Could he be following Lucy, too?
Before I knew it, my feet were racing along the streets toward Lucy’s neighborhood, throwing glances over my shoulder. I didn’t dare involve her in any of this, and yet I needed to make sure she was safe. Edward could be anywhere. I made my way toward her house in the finest part of town, where the muddy snow had been cleared from the streets. Every manor was stately here, even finer than in the professor’s neighborhood, and each home was decorated for the holidays in the latest fashions with mistletoe over the entryway.
Lucy’s family’s mansion was impossible to miss, a four-story red-brick palace on the most prominent corner, by far the grandest house in Belgravia. A wall of perfectly trimmed hedges designed to keep the riffraff out circled the rounded brick turrets. An iron gate led up the front walk to the imposing entryway topped with a holiday garland that smelled of pine.
I paused by the gate, casting another cautious glance over my shoulder. The smell took me back to my childhood, when I used to come here for parties. We’d had the most beautiful carriage then. I remembered soft lace curtains and peach upholstery. Montgomery would sit up front with the driver, learning his duties as groomsman, while Mother and Father and I rode in silence in the back until we pulled up at this very gate. Montgomery would take my hand—never meeting my eyes, as a proper young groomsman—and help me down from the carriage. The place beneath my left rib throbbed again at the memory.